MLB and Replay Review: Strange Keystone Combination

(Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

I was treated, twice in one game, to my first instances of umpire review of replays in a major league ballgame.

The Tigers were playing the Brewers at Comerica Park when Miguel Cabrera launched what obviously was a two-run homerun into the bullpen in left field. Imagine my surprise when the umpires ruled it in play and Cabrera stopped at first base for a long run-scoring single.

Everyone in the stadium knew it was gone, even the Brewer left fielder, who barehanded the ball when it bounced back into the field of play, knew it had been hit over the wall.

The umpires huddled for a time before, unable to come to consensus, heading off the field to review the play on replay before coming back to signal that Cabrera had indeed hit a homerun. Somehow it seemed anticlimactic to watch him circle the base paths from first base, where he’d been standing during this delay.

Two innings later Dusty Ryan hit what appeared to be a two-run homerun to left field and again the umpires huddled before heading off to watch a replay. The replays we viewers saw showed the ball had hit the yellow stripe atop the padding along the wall, which by rule is considered in play, so I suspected this homerun would be overturned, and so it was.

It could be argued that instant replay had allowed the umpires to make the right calls this night. So why does an old baseball purist like me feel sickened by baseball’s embrace of modern technology to get the right call?

The NFL has had instant replay for years and I’ve seen plenty of calls reversed; most go unturned, the call entrusted to the official on the field. I’ve been against instant replay in football from day one.

The truth is, in sports calls are missed. It’s part of the game. As a fan of one team or the other, you understand that fact, and you hope that the call that goes against your team at the end of the first half will be followed by a call in your team’s favor in the second half. They even out─unless your team happens to be the Detroit Lions.

In baseball calls are missed every night of the season. I see pitches on an inning-by-inning basis called strikes that look to be balls and pitches called balls that look to be strikes. As a spectator, I’ve learned to accept this fact and look, as the players do, only for consistency─that the visiting team isn’t getting that outside strike while the home team doesn’t.

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